Breaking Bad's Holy @#$% Hall of Fame!

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The most insanely awesome moments from Walter and Jesse's first three seasons of cooking.

By Matt Fowler

The long wait for Season 4 of AMC's Breaking Bad is over this Sunday, and once again we can expect Walt and Jesse to fill our stomachs full of knots with their harrowing adventures as part of the Albuquerque, New Mexico meth-underground. We originally wrote this feature about a year ago, right after Season 3 ended and left us all with our jaws on the floor. Now that the show is back…so is the Breaking Bad Holy @#$% Hall of Fame!

But what is it about this show that makes us love it so damn much? The incredible acting? The criminally-brilliant writing? The gorgeously-depressed Albuquerque backdrop?

Or maybe it's because this show actually makes you stand up and scream "Holy S***!" at your TV! It's true. We've done it several times. This show will freak the utter crap out of you. This show has tried, many times, to traumatize us all for life and we'd be remiss if we didn't provide you guys with a list of those attempts…

Click on Walter to see new images from the upcoming Season 4 premiere!

*SPOILER ALERT! for the first three seasons of Breaking Bad. We cannot stress this enough.*

Oh, wait. You eat right through just about anything on Earth, don't you? Awww. That's so precious. It's too bad that Walter never bothered to tell Jesse that little tidbit of information before he tried to dissolve that dead drug dealer in the bath tub. One of our favorite parts of this series early on was that it took two full episodes to deal with all the chaos that went down in the pilot. The collapsing ceiling of blood and guts was not only amazing, but it also marked the last time Walter divvied any responsibilities up with Jesse via a coin-flip. Because not only did he then have to help Jesse soak up all the vile offal and sinew, he also had to go and deal with his side of the bargain…

DEEP DISH

Episode: "…and the Bag's in the River"

…yes, Walter still had his own meth-dealer to take care of. We've watched Walter gradually make harrowing decisions and also we've seen the making harrowing decisions gradually come easier to Walter. This was one of Walter's first "crossroads" moments and, to be fair, he was kind of let off the hook a little bit. Just when he thought he was bonding with the held-captive Krazy-8 and that everything would turn out fine he notices…

This is why we can't have nice things!

…a particularly jagged and crucial missing piece from a broken plate; a piece that Krazy must have grabbed from the floor and hidden on his person in order to use to stab Walter when Walter eventually goes down to release him from the basement. After this, it could be said that Walter's hand was forced and he simply had to choke down Krazy in order to protect his family. Forced hand or not, we had "forced crap" in our pants after this episode.

As a form of psycho-prep and a sort of disassociation technique, Walter shaved his head, dressed in black and changed his name to "Heisenberg" -- Who doesn't love a good German theoretical physicist nod? -- when he went to confront the notoriously unhinged drug-pin Tuco over the small matter of Jesse's brutal beating and some stolen meth. We admit it. We had no idea what Walter was planning on doing, but he had a new-found confidence and a gruff new exterior that let us know he was, pretty much, ready to die over this deal.

"This is your brain on drugs."

Then came the clincher (cue old man screaming "Science!" from the old Thomas Dolby video) Walter's knowledge of chemistry saved the day in a big way when he let Tuco in on a little secret. He didn't bring meth to the dance. He brought f***-all exploding fulminated mercury!! KABLOOM went the entire second floor! And in that incredible, ballsy kamikaze display of kamikze ballsiness, Heisenberg was born.

Some moments don't catch you by surprise as much as they sit and slow-roast in your gut, tormenting you with their fiendishness. I don't know anyone who bites their nails when a movie or TV show becomes intense, but for all intents and purposes we'll call this scene a "nail-biter."

Poor Tio. If only he could somehow warn his nephew Tuco that Walter and Jesse were trying to poison his Tuco-burrito. If only he had some way to… wait a second! He's got a freakin' bell. And a nasty old man finger to ring it with. DING! Damn. Over and over again with the DING!

"What's wrong? Uncle Tio make boom boom?"

This was definitely one of those maddening, nerve-wracking scenes where things come oh so very close to going oh so very bad. DING! DING! DING! SHUUUUTT UPPPP!